• Wired, Monday, January 29, 2007 11:17 AM

It's virtual or bust for MTV Networks, the Viacom company that once enjoyed the enviable status of being the de facto temperature gauge of youth culture. The broadcaster, realizing that kids don't pay television the kind of attention they used to, is moving into virtual online worlds, long the domain of tech geeks, mostly 18-34 males.

For teens and 20somethings that want be like the kids on the highly successful reality show "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," MTV is making that possible (sort of), through a 3-D rendered Southern California world in which avatars piloted by the show's main characters, Kyndra and Cami, lounge by a virtual pool with scores of their fans, also piloting their own avatars.

The impetus for a such move, says MTV's Matt Bostwick, is the fact that while kids still watch MTV's shows, they later go on sites like MySpace and Facebook to talk about them. A virtual "Laguna Beach" is its response. This may be the next step in social networking.

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